Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor

In Sanders' bubble, childhood hunger is the fault of selfish consumers, self-serving entrepreneurs and rapacious retailers who engage in voluntary transactions in a free-market economy. Just as Sanders believes there are "too many" products on the shelves, President Obama recently opined that families of America's top earners in the financial industry "pretty much have more than you'll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use."

We need not speculate about whether the wealth-shamers' recipe of less capitalist consumption, fewer private businesses, stifling of entrepreneurship and more government control over goods and services would result in happier citizens and fuller stomachs. In Venezuela, the shelves are unburdened by "too many" deodorants and shoes and too much soap, milk or coffee. Food distribution is under military control. The currency of the socialist paradise just collapsed on the black market by 30 percent.

Here in America, dozens of private household goods companies make billions of dollars selling scented, unscented, quilted, two-ply, white and colored toilet paper that people want and need. In Sanders' utopia in South America, the government imposed price controls in the name of redistributing basic goods to the poor and seized a toilet paper factory to cure the inevitable shortages. The lines are long. The shelves are empty. The daily battle for subsistence is brutal.

Take it from those who suffer most under the unbridled fulfillment of "you didn't build that" and "you don't need that" radicalism: It stinks.